Ovid's Metamorphosis and Virgil's Aeneid - Translation Recommendations?

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

I was curious if anyone had recommendations on any good translations of these two works. I would like something with notes or footnotes, but it doesn't have to be insane with information. I'm reading Robert and Jean Hollanders' translation of Dante's Inferno, and while I'm glad for the extensive notes, they are a bit much (yes, I know I could just not read them, but my compulsiveness makes this hard to do).

Thanks, all.

[Alexander III]

For Virgil's Aeneid, I believe Faglles translation to be the best. I found it rather excellent. Though from my limited latin, I am able to understand that virgil is one of those writers which is impossible to translate, due to his heavy use of poetic techniques which for the most part cannot be translated ( alliteration, music of words, puns, wordplay, rhetoric)

[dfloyd]

classical writers. One can only give an opinion; the translation to be used is dependent on the background of and how comfortable the reader is with the type of translation. That being said, I prefer the English verse translations which were made in the 18th century. I believe these capture more of the flavor of the original authors since they don't pander to those who want classical literature modernized for the masses. I love to read literature, and I am not a pedant or a pedagogue (many colege professors fall into both categories), just an average person who thoroughly enjoys the Latin and Greek writers from Homer (who really didn't write) on down.

For the Aeneid, my preference is John Dryden. For the Metamorphoses, the group of translations performed primarily by John Dryden, Alexander Pope, and others under the direction of Sir Samuel Garth is the preferred. One can always read Flagles or other modern prose or free-verse translations after having savored the flavor of the great 18th century scholars and translators.

[mortalterror]

I've mentioned my preference before:

For the Metamorphoses I'd definitely go with Rolfe Humphries over Mandelbaum. He's a little too clunky for such a smooth poet, and as someone above me has already noted, the rhyme jars on the ear.

Here's Mandelbaum:

Before the sea and lands began to be,
before the sky had manteled every thing,
then all of natures face was featureless-
what men call chaos: undigested mass
of crude, confused, and scumbled elements,
a heap of seeds that clashed, of things mismatched.
There was no Titan Sun to light the world,
no crescent Moon- no Phoebe- to renew,
her slender horns; in the surrounding air,
earth's weight had yet to find it's balanced state;
and Amphitrites arms had not yet stretched
along the farthest margins of the land.
For though the sea and land and air were there,
the land could not be walked upon, the sea
could not be swum, the air was without splendor:
no thing maintained it's shape; all were at war;
in one same body cold and hot would battle;
the damp contended with the dry, things hard
with soft, and weighty things with weightless parts.

That just seems so passionless and dry to me. Ovid ought to be translated with the sensual luxuriance one would give to the writings of a French decadent (Baudelaire),

You too Silenus, are on fire, insatiable lecher:
Wickedness alone prevents you growing old.
-Ovid, Fasti, Book I

and the sort of exactness of phrase and poise which we find in scholars like Petrarch, Eliot, and Leopardi. It completely lacks the rhythm of Roman rhetoric which was as much a part of poetry then as it would be in the Renaissance. You don't get the feeling of how intensely conscious he is of poetic tradition. The phrases here don't even sound like they come from the right period. They should sound at least a little bit like Tibullus or Propertius, the way that Eliot sounds a little like Pound and Yeats.

If I had
A hundred tongues, a hundred mouths, a voice
Of iron, I could not tell of all the shapes
Their crimes had taken, or their punishments.
-lines 835-838, Book VI, Virgil's Aeneid

If I had a tireless voice, lungs stronger than brass, and many mouths with many tongues, not even so could I embrace them all in words for the theme surpasses my strength.-Tristia, Bk. I, v. ln. 43-74, Ovid

Also, what's with some of his diction choices, "scumbled?"

Here's the Humphries:

Before the ocean was, or earth, or heaven,
Nature was all alike, a shapelessness,
Chaos, so-called, all rude and lumpy matter,
Nothing but bulk, inert, in whose confusion
Discordant atoms warred: there was no sun
To light the universe; there was no moon
With slender silver crescents filling slowly;
No earth hung balanced in surrounding air;
No sea reached far along the fringe of shore.
Land, to be sure, there was, and air, and ocean,
But land on which no man could stand, and water
No man could swim in, air no man could breathe,
Air without light, substance forever changing,
Forever at war: within a single body
Heat fought with cold, wet fought with dry, the hard
Fought with the soft, things having weight contended
With weightless things.

He should be as humorous as Chaucer, the way Marlowe makes him:

We which were Ovids five books, now are three,
For these before the rest preferreth he:
If reading five thou plainst of tediousnesse,
Two tane away, thy labor will be lesse:

Fun loving, but also moral:

I saw a man who laughed at shipwrecks, drowned
in the sea, and said: ‘The waves were never more just.’
-Ovid's Tristia, Book V

though not so severe as Horace, or pious as Virgil. One's a mercenary, the other a priest, but Ovid is a retiring man of letters. Raised to the purple, he's conscious of his aristocratic status and writes with a conscious stately nobility. Certain feelings, and people, are beneath him

One person alone (and this itself is a great wrong)
won’t grant me the title of an honest man.
Whoever it is (for I’ll be silent still as yet about his name)
-Ovid, Ibis tr. Kline

People tend to think of Roman society as chauvinistic, but like Euripides before him he shows a deep concern for the plight of women. He frequently heaps praise and tenderness upon his loving wife and in the Heroides draws many subtle portraits women who have been ill treated by their paramours.

Penelope to the tardy Ulysses:
do not answer these lines, but come, for
Troy is dead and the daughters of Greece rejoice.
But all of Troy and Priam himself
are not worth the price I've paid for victory.
How often I have wished that Paris
had drowned before he reached our welcoming shores.
If he had died I would not have been
compelled now to sleep alone in my cold bed
complaining always of the tiresome
prospect of endless nights and days spent working
like a poor widow at my tedious loom.
Imagining hazards more awful than real,
love has always been tempered by fear:
I was sure it was you the Trojans attacked
and the name of Hector made me pale;
if someone told the tale of Antilochus
I dreamed of you dead as he had died;
if they sang of the death of Menoetius' son,
slain in armour not his own, I wept,
because even clever tricks had failed
-Ovid, Heroids tr.Isbell

A monologue worthy of Browning.

I don't know any one translation that captures these various sides of him, but Humphries is the best I know of for the Metamorphoses. Mandelbaum seemed like an also ran in his translations of Dante, not even rising to the level of Ciardi or Longfellow. It's been some time since I've read Melville, but if his Ovid is half as good as his work on Statius' Thebaid it should be fine:

The strife of brothers and alternate reigns
Fought for in impious hatred and the guilt
Of tragic Thebes, these themes the Muses' fire
Has kindled in my heart.

Statius is the only writer who wears his learning on his sleeve more than Ovid. Each line of Melville's translation is lush, allusion laden, and delicious. But on the other hand, Humphries did put out a very readable Juvenal. If I recall correctly they had these beautiful long lines that show off Latin hexameter so well. I'm sure whichever you pick, it should turn out all right.

Now I have done my work. It will endure,
I trust, beyond Jove's anger, fire and sword,
Beyond Time's hunger. The day will come, I know,
So let it come, that day which has no power
Save over my body, to end my span of life
Whatever it may be. Still, part of me,
The better part, immortal, will be borne
Above the stars; my name will be remembered
Wherever Roman power rules conquered lands,
I shall be read, and through the centuries,
If prophecies of bards are ever truthful,
I shall be living, always.

And again:

That Melville translation really sticks in my craw. It sounds like he's updated ancient Roman poetry to a sixteenth century English idiom. It doesn't have the feel of ancient Latin with the added draw back that it doesn't even sound like 16th century English. Here's how Marlowe translated Book one of Ovid's Amores.

We which were Ovids five books, now are three,
For these before the rest preferreth he:
If reading five thou plainst of tediousnesse,
Two tane away, thy labor will be lesse:
With Muse upreard I meant to sing of armes,
Choosing a subject fit for feirse alarmes:
Both verses were alike till Love (men say)
Began to smile and tooke one foote away.

That Melville translation above feels all wrong. It's like he's reaching for something. I like the idea of translating just about anything into blank verse, but we've had developments since Shakespeare's time, Milton and Wordsworth for example; so modern blank verse doesn't sound that way anymore. If Melville isn't going to give a modern translation in a modern style, then what's the point of updating at all? Why not just take an older translation.

The Dryden translation is dated and doesn't sound any more like Ovid but it's still better than Melville's if you want to go that route.

Of bodies chang'd to various forms, I sing:
Ye Gods, from whom these miracles did spring,
Inspire my numbers with coelestial heat;
'Till I my long laborious work compleat:
And add perpetual tenour to my rhimes,
Deduc'd from Nature's birth, to Caesar's times.

The Humphries translation may not be perfect but it has the asset of at least sounding something like Ovid.

As for the Aeneid I'm a fan of either the Fitzgerald or Fagles. You can't go wrong with either. I hear good things about the new Lombardo translation and the Dryden is a classic of the English language. None of them, to my knowledge, include detailed notes but you might check out Virgil's Aeneid Discussion Group here on Litnet for a run down of the first couple books. http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?t=31392&highlight=aeneid

[dfloyd]

classical writers. One can only give an opinion; the translation to be used is dependent on the background of and how comfortable the reader is with the type of translation. That being said, I prefer the English verse translations which were made in the 18th century. I believe these capture more of the flavor of the original authors since they don't pander to those who want classical literature modernized for the masses. I love to read literature, and I am not a pedant or a pedagogue (many colege professors fall into both categories), just an average person who thoroughly enjoys the Latin and Greek writers from Homer (who really didn't write) on down.

For the Aeneid, my preference is John Dryden. For the Metamorphoses, the group of translations performed primarily by John Dryden, Alexander Pope, and others under the direction of Sir Samuel Garth is the preferred.

One can always read the modern prose or free-verse translations zfter having savored the great 18th century scholars and translators.

[hanzklein]

classical writers. One can only give an opinion; the translation to be used is dependent on the background of and how comfortable the reader is with the type of translation. That being said, I prefer the English verse translations which were made in the 18th century. I believe these capture more of the flavor of the original authors since they don't pander to those who want classical literature modernized for the masses. I love to read literature, and I am not a pedant or a pedagogue (many colege professors fall into both categories), just an average person who thoroughly enjoys the Latin and Greek writers from Homer (who really didn't write) on down.

For the Aeneid, my preference is John Dryden. For the Metamorphoses, the group of translations performed primarily by John Dryden, Alexander Pope, and others under the direction of Sir Samuel Garth is the preferred. One can always read Flagles or other modern prose or free-verse translations after having savored the flavor of the great 18th century scholars and translators.Keep in mind these 18th century translators are wildly inaccurate.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Thanks for the Ovid comparison, Mortalterror. Definitely going to go with Rolfe Humphries.I don't know anything about Latin or how one translation is more "true" to the Latin language, but I definitely like how his reads. Thanks.

Thanks for the other suggestions, everyone.

[stlukesguild]

I wouldn't question Mortal's comments on Ovid, his being the native Roman aficionado. I will say that I've only read the Dryden and Mandelbaum entirely... and one horrible revisionist translation from the 1960's which I threw away after only a chapter... it was that bad!. I quite enjoyed the Mandelbaum, but knowing a number of Humphries' other translations I don't doubt the merits of his Ovid.

I will ask Mortal if he's come across Arthur Golding's translation c. 1567 which was the favorite translation of Shakespeare among many other English writers of the period when Ovid was second only to the Bible in his inspiration of literature and art?

[mortalterror]

I will ask Mortal if he's come across Arthur Golding's translation c. 1567 which was the favorite translation of Shakespeare among many other English writers of the period when Ovid was second only to the Bible in his inspiration of literature and art?

Perused the first 100 lines and they seem out of focus. Couldn't keep it clear in my head what he was saying, though I'd read the lines before. Took my Humphries down from the shelf and all was made clear.

Since I happen to have both the Fagles and Fitzgerald Aeneid's close to hand, how about a comparison? First the Fitzgerald:


I sing of warfare and a man at war.
From the sea-coast of Troy in early days
He came to Italy by destiny,
To our Lavinian western shore,
A fugitive, this captain, buffeted
Cruelly on land as on the sea
By blows from powers of the air-behind them
Baleful Juno in her sleepless rage.
And cruel losses were his lot in war,
Till he could found a city and bring home
His gods to Latium, land of the Latin race,
The Alban lords, and the high walls of Rome.
Tell me the causes now, O Muse, how galled
In her divine pride, and how sore at heart
From her old wound, the queen of gods compelled him-
A man apart, devoted to his mission-
To undergo so many perilous days
And enter on so many trials. Can anger
Black as this prey on the minds of heaven?

Then the Fagles:

Wars and a man I sing-an exile driven on by Fate,
he was the first to flee the coast of Troy,
destined to reach Lavinian shores and Italian soil,
yet many blows he took on land and sea from the gods above-
thanks to cruel Juno's relentless rage-and many losses
he bore in battle too, before he could found a city,
bring his gods to Latium, source of the Latin race,
the Alban lords and the high walls of Rome.
Tell me,
Muse how it all began. Why was Juno outraged?
What could wound the Queen of the Gods with all her power?
Why did she force a man, so famous for his devotion,
to brave such rounds of hardship, bear such trials?
Can such rage inflame the immortals hearts?

Now, the Dryden:


Arms, and the man I sing, who, forc'd by fate,
And haughty Juno's unrelenting hate,
Expell'd and exil'd, left the Trojan shore.
Long labors, both by sea and land, he bore,
And in the doubtful war, before he won
The Latian realm, and built the destin'd town;
His banish'd gods restor'd to rites divine,
And settled sure succession in his line,
From whence the race of Alban fathers come,
And the long glories of majestic Rome.

O Muse! the causes and the crimes relate;
What goddess was provok'd, and whence her hate;
For what offense the Queen of Heav'n began
To persecute so brave, so just a man;
Involv'd his anxious life in endless cares,
Expos'd to wants, and hurried into wars!
Can heav'nly minds such high resentment show,
Or exercise their spite in human woe?

The Fitzgerald is very compressed, very economical, very poetic. It's charged, for lack of a better explanation. The Fagles is loose and loopy, and feels quite a bit like Homer, which could be an asset over the long haul. The diction is clearer, simpler, more down to earth in the Fagles. I like them both. With the Dryden you know you are reading a classic. It has the antiquated style, a touch more majesty, and a lot more rhetoric. You can feel it bounce at the end of each couplet, with an ebb and flow like waves.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Out of those three, I like the Fitzgerald. Fagles just seems kind of loose and meandering, while Dryden sticking to rhyming couplets is, for me, a bit distracting (I keep looking for the rhymes, and am annoyed when there's on off-rhyme.

Thanks for the rundown, Mortalterror. Much appreciated!

[mal4mac]

For Ovid, what about Ted Hughes?:

Before sea or land, before even sky
Which contains all,
Nature wore only one mask -
Since called Chaos.
A huge agglomoration of upset.
A bolus of everything - but
As if aborted.
And the total arsenal of entropy
Already at war within it.

No Sun showed one thing to another,
No moon
Played her phases in heaven,
No earth
Spun in empty air...

I also prefer the Fitzgerald in the Aenied - there's a nice Everyman's hardback edition that's worth owning, and not expensive - of course, the only real reason to buy a translation is the, er, translation, not how the wood pulp is put together - but a nice hardback is, er, nice.

[hanzklein]

Personally, I find there is something wrong with Fitzgerald's translations. It has such a strange quality and lack of cadence. Perhaps this is because he uses a very simple style but inserts SAT words everywhere.